Poverty Law News

Attorneys/Legal Services

ABA House of Delegates Passes Resolution Calling for Civil Right to Counsel
On August 7, 2006, the American Bar Association's House of Delegates unanimously passed Resolution 112A, proposed by the Presidential Task Force on Access to Civil Justice, as amended. The resolution urges federal, state, and territorial governments to provide legal counsel as a matter of right at public expense to low income persons in those categories of adversarial proceedings where basic human needs are at stake, such as those involving shelter, sustenance, safety, health or child custody, as determined by each jurisdiction. The July-August 2006 issue of Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy covers the movement to establish a civil right to counsel.

Consumer

Life and Debt Cycle
The National Consumer Law Center's Report "The Life and Debt Cycle Part One: The Implications of Rising Credit Card Debt Among Older Consumers," examines the extent and consequences of credit card borrowing by elders. A second report, to be released in August 2006, focuses on the types of programs and resources available to help older consumers with credit card problems.

Employment

$5.4 Million Awarded to Test Employment Strategy for Ex-Prisoners
The Joyce Foundation is awarding grants totaling nearly $5.4 million to test a promising strategy for enabling people leaving prisons to connect to jobs. The Joyce grants provide the lynchpin for a $14.5 million initiative that will provide the first large-scale evaluation of whether “transitional jobs” can improve employment outcomes and reduce recidivism for the growing number of people, currently estimated at 600,000, who return home from the nation’s prisons each year.

Family Law

Child Support
On August 2, 2006, Vicki Turetsky of the Center for Law and Social Policy made a presentation to the National Child Support Enforcement Association on "Child Support Assignment and Distribution Provisions in the Deficit Reduction Act." CLASP has posted the slides from that presentation.

Health

Language Barriers to Health Care
In this editorial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Glenn Flores, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, notes that, although 49.6 million Americans speak a language other than English at home, many patients who need medical interpreters have no access to them. Dr. Flores argues that the time has come for payers to be required to reimburse providers for interpreter services.

Housing

Social Policy Issues in Public Housing
The first issue of Northwestern University's new Journal of of Law and Social Policy is devoted to social policy issues in public housing. Article topics address racial inequality, assisted housing mobility, and comprehensive approaches to urban development. The issue features an article by William P. Wilen, Shriver Center Director of Housing Litigation, on "The Horner Model: Successfully Redeveloping Public Housing."

Family Housing Choices in the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program
The Poverty & Race Research Action Council and the National Fair Housing Alliance have sponsored a new report that looks at all Low Income Housing Tax Credit units developed between 1995 and 2003 to show the extent to which the program produces family housing in low poverty and non-racially concentrated neighborhoods in large metropolitan areas.  The report includes rankings of all large metropolitan areas in the country to compare the extent to which states promote family housing in low poverty and racially integrated areas. 

Preservation Information Exchange
The Department of Agriculture has launched a Preservation Information Exchange website where nonprofits interested in preserving affordable housing can access the site to obtain information regarding RD Section 515 Rural Rental Housing and Section 514 and 516 Farm Labor Housing projects whose owners have applied to prepay their RD loans. Only nonprofit and public agencies have access to the website and they must register with the agency on the site before gaining full access to it.

Prisons

Orleans Parish Prisoners Abandoned in Wake of Hurricane Katrina
The ACLU Prison Project has released a report, Abandoned and Abused: Orleans Parish Prisoners in the Wake of Katrina, that details the experiences of thousands of men, women, and children who were abandoned at the Orleans Parish Prison in the days after the storm. n conjunction with the report's release, the National Prison Project urged the president to direct the Department of Justice to evaluate the Orleans Parish Prison's current evacuation plans in an effort to determine whether any meaningful improvements have been made over the past year. The ACLU also asked Congress to audit the jail's emergency preparedness plans. 

Welfare

Getting On, Staying On, and Getting Off Welfare
This Urban Institute brief reviews state variations in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, from initial and ongoing eligibility to work requirements, reductions in benefits because of sanctions, and time limits. It includes a table summarizing variations, as of 2003, in such areas as the minimum hourly work requirement, the obligation to look for a job when applying for TANF, and the benefit reductions for infractions of TANF rules.